Better in their words…

If you are willing to think and reasonably discuss the issue, I invite you to this perspective.
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By Ashley H. Lukis

I can understand why gun control dominates the public conversation after incidents like Sandy Hook, like Virginia Tech, like Charleston. What I cannot begin to comprehend is how, when faced by an ideological monster who has pledged his allegiance to an Islamic terrorist organization, who has been recounted by those who knew him as an anti-gay bigot and woman beater, and who has been investigated by the FBI for suspected ties to other terrorists, the reaction of many Americans is to cry out for more gun laws and to condemn other Americans who oppose such restrictions.

Instead of blaming the perverse militants who have formed a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, who are burning people alive, who are raping and murdering women and children, and who are engaging in an aggressive global propaganda campaign to encourage precisely the murderous behavior that we saw in Orlando, in San Bernardino, in Brussels and in Paris—many Americans are attacking other law-abiding citizens who happen to hold a different interpretation of the Constitution.

Perhaps most unsettling is that the president of the United States, as well as the leading Democratic candidate for president, both fall into this category of misguided blame-shifters. How arrogant to think that an international cancer of wickedness and violence can be curbed by the efforts of lobbyists and legislators in Washington, D.C.

We are dealing with terrorism. We are talking about evil individuals who will happily strap bombs to their bodies or hijack a commercial airliner or set off homemade explosives in the middle of a crowded street. And the best solution you can come up with is domestic gun control?

We are dealing with a man, Omar Mateen, who pledged his loyalty to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Yet those who focused on Islamist terrorism after Orlando are condemned as politicizers and bigots and fearmongers.

What happened at the Pulse nightclub was not only a mass shooting. Pulse was a terrorist attack—a terrorist attack that targeted gay Americans because in the warped vision of Islam championed by Islamic State, both “gay” and “American” are labels that warrant a violent death. I am deeply disturbed by the suggestion that the terrorist attack on a business in Orlando with a gay clientele—a nightclub that is walking distance from the first house where I and my husband lived, in a city that is still home to dozens of people I love—boils down to nothing more than a domestic gunrights issue. That is a dangerous and offensive falsehood.

I understand why the gun-control conversation continues in this country. I respect the opinions of those who call for assault-weapons bans, irrespective of my own views on the Second Amendment. Disagreement and understanding can, and should, coexist in a rational and free society. But terrorist attacks will never be a gun-control issue, despite what your social-media feed insists. Despite what your president insists.

The solution to terrorism is not to pass imperfect laws that will palliate the masses until next time. Nor is the solution to look inward, to make speeches, to tweet about your grief or start a hashtag. The solution to terrorism is not to blame the gun lobby. The solution to terrorism is to fight and destroy terrorists, at home and abroad. Gun control is a separate conversation entirely.

Ms. Lukis is a lawyer in Tallahassee, Fla.

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